Research analyst looks at price matching

Improving Forecasting with Consumer Insights

Using SurveyMonkey Audience, a research analyst determined if Best Buy’s price matching campaign could capture customers back from online retailers.

Background

Best Buy (BBY), a major seller of consumer electronics, has faced increasing competition from online retailers like Amazon.com (AMZN), eBay (EBAY) and others. More and more shoppers use Best Buy as a showroom to view and test merchandise and then head home to purchase products online, where they might find better deals. Best Buy recently attempted to counteract this new problem by offering year-round price matching against online retailers.

To gather data on the effectiveness of this campaign, an equity research analyst wanted to talk to consumers to see whether people felt this would bring them back into retail stores. He turned to SurveyMonkey Audience to create a high-quality survey and target Best Buy customers to get the exact insights he needed.

Key Insights

Showrooming is common

When asked if they use Best Buy to just look at products in a store but later purchase online, 69% of all respondents said they have used the electronic retailer to “showroom” at least some of the time when shopping for electronics.

Price matching could work

Would shoppers be more inclined to purchase in store at Best Buy instead of online if they felt like they could get the best deal in the market? The analyst wanted to get an idea of just how successful the new price matching initiative would be in achieving its goal. The results were promising, with 63% of respondents saying they would be very to extremely likely to purchase the desired product at Best Buy if the store price matched against online retailers.

Putting Results Into Action

Armed with data from his SurveyMonkey Audience survey, the research analyst confirmed that Best Buy is being used by shoppers as showrooms when they are in the market for new electronics. But, showrooming could be significantly curtailed since the majority of consumers said they would purchase the desired product in store if Best Buy price matched online retailers. While competition from online retailers won’t diminish completely, investors should monitor the price matching initiative to see if it will keep shoppers in the stores and end up having a positive effect on the future of Best Buy holdings.